


Morrigan

by Sigrid_Storrada



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Dealing With Loss, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Elf/Human Relationship(s), F/M, Het, Hurt/Comfort, King Alistair, Pining, Rough Sex, Sexual Content, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 21:20:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6723988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigrid_Storrada/pseuds/Sigrid_Storrada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years on and Aedan Cousland still pines for the witch he loves. A collection of his memories of their time together, and a tale of his ongoing downward spiral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. History of Touches

I remember the moment I first saw her as if it were yesterday.

She slunk in behind us, alerting us to her presence with her voice, sultry but clear; full of confidence. Who could have known that this would be my undoing. This woman, this witch.

It had been two years since I had seen her. Since we made love, since she disappeared from my life, as she said she would.

And to think that I truly believed that I could convince her to stay somehow. To think that I was so naïve to believe that I could simply talk her around, like I thought I had done in the past. No, she was too clever for that. Too clever, and too proud. And I had been a fool.

 

In two years one would think that my feelings towards her might wane. I know Alistair had hoped as much. And perhaps, a small part of me too hoped that I could forget her, just to end the pain, the ceaseless torment. But I should have known better.  
Alistair is a fine man, and he makes a fine king beside Anora, as I knew he would. But, closer than a brother though he is to me, he will never understand. He cannot.

He was always too, pure. And that is both his finest quality and his greatest hindrance. He could never understand why I loved her. What I saw in her.

To be frank, at first I did not love her. In fact, though she would never admit it, I believe it was she who began to soften towards me.

She was beautiful. No – not beautiful. Beautiful is what one compliments a lady with; a woman of breeding and impeccable etiquette who spends her days taking turns about the room, confined until death to a wealthy estate, like a caged falcon. The sort of woman my mother would have wanted me to marry. 

Morrigan was a harpy. Exquisite beyond belief and lascivious and free like a dryad. She was dressed like a harlot, but so it is living in the forests so far from the cities of men. And in any case, I was never one to turn away a loose woman. 

A witch of the wilds. 

I may have been young, but I was not that thoughtless; I knew what she was as soon as she slunk upon our party, all but lost in the thick of the great woods as we were. Who else could survive out there, so unscathed as she? Who else could track our movement? Stalk us, undetected in the shadows, as she no doubt had been doing for some time?

No, I knew what she was as soon as I laid eyes upon her. But I was young, strong, and full of my own ability. The other men were afraid and mistrustful. And so they should have been. I, on the other hand, was intrigued.

I would put her down with a hew of my axe if she were fool enough to assault me, or so I believed at the time; but something about her told me that she was no fool.

She had yet to actually threaten us – in fact, thus far, she seemed only interested in gathering information. And, as I was more interested in gathering information from her, I was content to speak with this arresting stranger.

 

And so she came to accompany us on our journey. 

The more we spoke, the more captivated by her I became. How clever she was! And how delightfully wicked, both in humour and thought. I found it refreshing to be with someone who was not so kind-hearted as Alistair, loved him though I did.

Not that I agreed with many of the things she said; I did not. At that stage, I was still quite the gentleman, as hard as that may be to believe to those who know me now. But I enjoyed her company nonetheless.

I came to look forward to the moments we stole to speak together. We flirted with one another shamelessly, but I got the distinct impression that that was her way.

At first I wanted only to make love to her. Both for her bewitching beauty and her sinful mind, which beguiled me no end. But do not believe, dear reader, that there was a shred of romantic affection in my desire at this point, because it was not so.

We flirted and teased each other openly and often, until one evening as we spoke in relative seclusion from our travel-mates around our campsite, I grew bold and kissed her. She seemed to enjoy it, and our flirtation after that evening grew ever more tireless and sordid in nature, until finally, not so many nights afterwards, she seduced me.

And, Maker forgive me, she was incredible.

And so it began. Every spare moment we had we were making love; furtively in my tent of a night-time; boldly in an alleyway, her warm, soft body pressed up fiercely against the old, cold stone of a wall; tenderly, only meagrely obscured from view in our campsite as the afternoon sun graced our skin through the leaves of the overhead trees.

She was comely, experienced, sultry, teasing; she was a grown woman unafraid of herself and she lusted for me every bit as much as I lusted for her.

And I don’t remember the moment I fell in love with her. 

One moment I was courting her, chasing her almost out of sport and a love of the hunt, still making eyes at every young and pretty barmaid from Highever to Denerim, and the next I could see no other but her.

She changed something within me. She was funny, clever, cunning, proud, powerful, and beautiful, and best of all, she was mine.  
After we had spent the night together, we would stay awake and talk long into the small hours of the night, tangled in one another, her bare skin against mine. And suddenly, I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

 

I was not a romantic man, but nor was I heartless. I did not believe in childish notions such as ‘love at first sight’, or ‘true love’, but I knew that she was a woman worth devoting myself to.

Suddenly, my imagination was filled with images of marrying her, of eloping with her into the forests and living the rest of our days like Chasind folk, happy with one another. Perhaps we could have children? After all, why not?

I had a duty to fulfil, a duty that I could not afford to shirk for the sake of all Ferelden, but also one that I was, in a small way, honoured to give myself to. But that duty could not last forever.

If I failed, then we would all die, along with all plans for the future. But if I succeeded, as I very much planned to do, then I would have to do something with myself, would I not?

Why not spend it with her? Why not make her my wife? To make love to her every night and wake up by her side every morning; I would feel blessed for the rest of my life.

 

Some, Alistair amongst them, could not understand what I saw in her. But I didn’t care. They were wrong.

She was the most perfect creature I had ever seen – I had been a fool not to recognise it immediately. Or, perhaps it had taken a little while for her to open herself to me, to show me her mind and her heart. How she could be so kind and soft and caring, though no one ever expected it from her.

Her hardness was a product of her arduous upbringing, by that foul creature Flemeth. How she could bring one into the world such as Morrigan and not see how lucky she was just to be able to have her in her life, I will never understand.

But that same upbringing smartened her unlike any of the women I have ever met in any of the towns and villages across Ferelden. Those women are soft and weak, affected by their place and comfort in this society of men. But Morrigan was free, a sprite of the forests. I loved that about her more than I could say.

 

At first, when she realised what had begun between us, she withdrew from me. I understood her fear, but I would not allow her to retreat from me. She was afraid that she had begun to care for me. She was afraid that I would never truly love her, as her mother had never truly loved her, as no one had ever truly loved her.

I knew her pain, I knew where it came from, and I knew that she had nothing to fear from me. As soon as I realised what my feelings were for her, I intended nothing other than to serve her on my bended knee until death take us. But I knew she could not trust me overnight; I understood. So I had to comfort her; to persuade her; to beg her; to try in every way to still her fears whenever they should arise so that she would stay with me a little longer. So that I could show her for one more day that I was never going to abandon her.

I was never going to abandon her.

It is almost funny to think how such a harpy could make me so honourable of intention. But truly, no one but Morrigan could have made me feel so. She was for me, and I her. I was surer of that than I had ever been of anything.


	2. Stonemilker

I was once a good man. Once honourable, loyal, brave. I did not get to where I am out of luck alone. But I would be lying if I said that I believe that I am still that man.

How years of grief and torture can change a person! I was young and perhaps too haughty then, but such is a young man’s burden.

I am no coward. Save perhaps when I was a child, I had never feared death. I suppose I had never felt I had much to live for. Such a philosophy made it an easy decision to fall in with the Grey Wardens – fight with my life to protect the lives of those around me.

But I remember the distinct taste of fear – fretfulness writhing in pit of my stomach – when it was finally revealed to Alistair and I by the Warden Riordan on the eve of battle that one of us would have to give their lives in order to destroy the Archdemon.

Understand, good reader, that Duncan, the late leader of our order, had fallen at Ostagar before he was ever able to explain to either Alistair or I the true reason a Warden is the only one able to vanquish an Archdemon. Even now such things are not readily known, but what need have I of secrets these days? I have scarcely need of life.

Riordan offered himself, and though I said nothing, I silently agreed that he was the best choice of the three of us to die. He was older than us by a fair amount, and more experienced with the darkspawn.

But if Riordan failed, I would have to die next. Alistair could not die – aside that he was my friend, he was to marry Anora and rule Ferelden, and that was too important for the good of the people to risk.

 

Normally, such a thought would not have bothered me. I was a Warden, and ultimately, this is the lot of one whose duty is to protect others over himself. But there, in that small room with Alistair and Riordan, I suddenly felt sick.

I left as soon as Riordan had finished speaking to us, not waiting for Alistair, and began striding down the long hallway towards my own chambers.

All I could think of was her.

How could I tell her? Could I go through with it? Perhaps, if we were to flee together…? But no, that could never work. If I did not go through with this, there may be no place in to which we could flee. Morrigan would die, just as certainly as everyone else.

I would die for her, surer than anything in this world. But the thought of never seeing her again, of never being able to touch her, to kiss her, to hear her laugh that sultry, earnest chuckle that she laughs when she is caught off-guard, to see her feign annoyance at me over some trivial thing… the thought was too painful to bear.

If it had not been for the darkspawn threat I would have asked her to marry me ten times over by now. I have never before envisioned a future for myself – whatever happened, happened; wherever I ended up, well, so be it. But now, after everything she and I had been through together, it felt like the only reason I woke up in the morning and continued to draw breath was to be by her side.

I wanted a future now, because I wanted it to be with her.

It was a selfish attitude – a great misdeed for a Warden, I knew. But I didn’t care. I needed to find her, to speak with her. Perhaps, together, we could formulate some plan? We had to. It was no longer an option for me to live without her.

 

I passed my chambers within the castle as I strode down the hallway, heading towards her room, when I noticed that my door was open.

I glanced in, to find none other than my Morrigan standing still, an exquisite statue, lost in thought as she peered down into the glowing fireplace. 

I sighed in relief, walking into the room and closing the door quickly behind me.

I assumed, naturally, that she was there to talk, to spend the night with me. Perhaps she was worried; our battle was to come the following morning, and we were all called for service.

But I could never have guessed what she was there to tell me.


	3. Black Lake

That night. The night before our final battle, the night before I slew the Archdemon.

What is there to possibly say of that night?

Morrigan approached me coldly with a proposition: a way that the Archdemon could be killed without the death of any Wardens. It was blood magic, but I heard her out.

A young lord of Highever, I had been raised to respect the teachings of the Chantry. And I had done, once upon a time. But I had never been overly devoted to their sermons and preaching, and since I had been with Morrigan – though I was no mage by any means – I had come to understand and respect her way. Blood magic, in and of itself, no longer bore much ill-will from me. It was the nature of spell in question that I now judged.

So I listened. Even a little eager, thus far. Morrigan continued.

She would lie with me that night, and from our union she would conceive a child. The child – our child – would bear the taint, as I do.  
When the Archdemon was slain, whether by my hand or by the hand of another Warden, its soul will not be drawn into ours as would normally happen, killing both Warden and beast. Instead, the soul of the Archdemon would seek out the unborn child that bears the taint like a beacon. The child, in its premature form, would survive and possess the soul of an Old God, freed of its darkspawn corruption.

But, of course, there was a catch.

She would conceive this child with me, and then she would leave and raise it alone. She would save my life with her actions, but then she would leave. I would never see her again, and I was never to follow her.

 

I didn’t respond for the longest moment, silent but for the storm of emotions raging inside me. She reclined on my bed before me, eyeing me cautiously like a cat. She gazed at me with neither sadness nor pleasure; rather, she was cold to me. Detached.

Her words stung me like nothing I had felt before, and yet somehow I still believed, deep down, that her determination to leave me was just another expression of her apprehension, her fear that I would one day leave her.

Because she loved me; I knew she did. I knew it as surely as I knew anything. If there were truly a reason she believed she needed to leave me, it could not be because of that. And then, if so, perhaps she could yet be persuaded.

 

To have a child with her.

That she would even suggest it… it meant so much to me. She could never have known.

But her plan was sheer madness. Why was she leaving? Why could I not simply go with her? I didn’t understand.

She refused to give me an answer. I grew impatient, hurt and confused at these sudden revelations – coming out of nowhere, or so I thought.

For it was Flemeth’s plan all along, she revealed. This ritual, as she called it, was the reason that Flemeth had rescued Alistair and I at Ostagar; the reason Morrigan was bid to accompany us in the first place.

A part of me felt a sharp sting as I realised that there may have been some truth to Alistair’s initial warning after all – the concerned admonition of a friend; the well-meaning advice I ignored time and time again because I trusted the woman I loved to never betray me.

But, no – I had not been wrong to trust her. This wasn’t Morrigan’s fault – it was Flemeth’s. And if Morrigan believed still, after everything that we had been through together, that this ritual was a good idea, then I believed it too.

Because Morrigan was not a wicked woman inside; her heart every bit as pure and good as someone like Alistair’s – I am as certain of that as I am certain the sun will rise to-morrow.

So I agreed. What choice did I have?

Then, at least, she would stay with me for one more night – a night during which we would, for the first time, try to conceive a child. I wished so desperately that laying with me, or the thought of our child, or the coming battle – or anything – might make her rethink her plans, and by the morning she would be at least more amenable to my arguments, if she had not already had a change of heart.

But she was too clever for that. Too clever, too proud, and too prepared. She knew how I would react, and was determined to fight against it. And I had been a fool.

 

In the morning, we prepared and marched into battle. I was wordlessly distraught, but I had a duty to fulfil. And I needed to see it done – to save the life of my Morrigan, if for no-one else.

I tried to speak to her, but she withdrew from me in anger when I brought up the subject. I didn’t know what to do, so I let it be.

 

The battle came and went – the hardest of my life in so many ways, and I care not to revisit it.

But the Archdemon was slain by my hand, and through no mean feat.

And afterwards, while I was bloodied and gasping for air and desperately searching for Alistair’s body through piles of dead and dying men, she slipped away. Gone from the battlefield, and gone from my life.

That was two years ago, and I have not laid eyes upon her since.


	4. Quicksand

After Morrigan left I was devastated. I was alive, and yet I found myself wishing that I had not survived.

Alistair was wedded to Anora and he succeeded the throne of his father, and I was proud for him; it is rare for people in life to get that which they truly deserve, but I believe Alistair did when he inherited his kingdom – a worthier man in all Ferelden there was not.

I accepted his post as Chancellor, but I told him from the beginning that I would also be pursuing my own quest, wherever possible. I would find Morrigan.

I had sworn to her, on that last night that we spent together, that if she left me I would find her.

I do not promise such things lightly.

I was angry. I was hurt. I was empty. I withdrew from others. I blamed her bitterly for all the hurt she had caused me, but I knew that if she walked in the door at that very moment I would fall before her and beg her to take me back. I was nothing to her.

Morrigan had known all along. She had known since the beginning – far before I had known – that I would need to sacrifice my life in order to destroy the beast. Of course she had been unwilling to fall in love with me, though in the end I believe she did anyway.

I should not blame her. And yet I did.

How could she not tell me? How could she not have been completely honest with me from the time we began to feel for one another? She had known the entire time – she had planned to trick me the entire time – and yet it did not have to be so. None of it had to be so.

I was not an illogical man; if there had truly been no way, if there had earnestly been no possibility of she and I living together, then I would have accepted it – I would have had no choice. Even if she had said that she did not love me anymore would have been preferable to this!

How could she say that she loves me and then demand never to see me again? How could she not tell me why she had to leave? How could she leave me in the dark about so many things?

Didn’t she understand the suffering – the constant hurt? Didn’t she understand that I still thought of her every day without fail? That she was the first thought in my mind when I woke up, and the last thing I saw at night before I fell asleep?

Or perhaps she did understand, but simply didn’t care.

 

All I had to remember her by was the ring she gave me. And to think at the time I had believed it to be a sign she was ready to pledge herself to me; how foolish I was.

But the ring did have its uses; it was no ordinary ring, of course – it had been a gift from an apostate, after all. Imbued with her black magic, while I wore it, it bound us to one another. Through it, she would always known where I was, even if her location was to forever remain unknown to me.

I clutched it at night-time – the only physical reminder I had of her ever being more than just a beautiful, bitter-sweet dream. I toyed with it, smooth metal between calloused fingers, holding it to my heart, caressing it with my lips, whispered little things to her.

And then one night it happened – I felt her. I felt Morrigan through the ring.

Oh, how to explain such an unforeseen, torturous thing?

I lay awake in bed, alone in the darkness as I had done so many hundreds of nights before, twirling the warmed metal upon my ring-finger from whence it never strayed; for she would be my bride in sentiment if she could not be with me in reality.

And then I felt her – a jolt through my body; a flash behind my eyes – I felt her feel me; wherever she was, whatever she was doing at that moment in time, she was thinking of me. And she sensed my feelings, and I sensed hers.

She felt sorrow; she felt sadness, and regret.

As soon as I realised what was happening I felt broken. Close to tears, it was as if I had been struck in the chest by a great, blunt force, and yet in the same moment it was as if I had been pierced through the heart and I ached with the pain.

Maker, by what cruelty were you compelled to make men able to feel such misery? 

But my pain turned quickly to anger. And I wanted her to feel it.

How could you? I felt – throughout my entire body I felt it. How could you leave me like this?

I know she understood me. But she bade me no reply.

I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to cry. I wanted to drop to me knees before her and beg her for forgiveness, beg her to take me back.

Whatever I had done; I was sorry! Whatever I wasn’t, I could become! Didn’t she understand? My life was nothing without her. Nothing.

I was a slave. Not just to her, but in life. I was a Grey Warden – as a king has his responsibilities to serve his country, so I had my responsibility to serve all; to protect the people from evil, to ensure they had the greatest chance of freedom and fairness and opportunity in life. And before I met her I didn’t even care; if I had died doing my duty then so be it, such was the lot of a Warden. And I would have been happy to have met my end with honour.

But she gave me a reason to care. Perhaps this was why she regarded love as a weakness; it certainly made me weak. It made me selfish. But now, so bitter and twisted under her spell, I was too far gone to save. I cared about myself then because I wanted to serve her. I could not let ill befall me because then I could not look at her and touch her and feed off her warmth and smile; I was hopeless before her.

Oh, my precious Morrigan, how you ensnared me! And yet there I was, happy and distraught to serve you.

And the child – my child. How I loved it, and yet we had never met. Our little one, they would have been almost two years old by now.  
Was it a boy or a girl? What did she name her? Does she look more like me, or her mother? Does he know anything of his father? Does he know that I love him, more than I love my own life?

Does Morrigan ever look at her child and see me? Does she ever look into the eyes of her baby and see my own? Or maybe he is just the image of his mother, save for a few of my mannerisms? Does she ever wish, like I wish, that we could be together as a family?

No. How could she? How could she love me, how could she wish such things, and yet be content to leave me in this torment?

And yet, I didn’t even care; even if Morrigan didn’t love me so much but merely allowed me to be around her, I believe I could live with that. How desperate and twisted I had become! How hurt and broken the years had left me.

I was no longer a Warden. I felt as tainted and maddened as a child who had feasted upon darkspawn flesh; like an Old God drawn into and consumed by the power of the shadows, so I was to my Morrigan.

Sweetest witch, beloved huntress, mother to my child, love of my life.

There was nothing I would not sacrifice to be with her. No amount of gold I would not part with; no amount of blood I would not spill; no amount of dark magic I would not wield to my aid, if any such existed.

 

I got no answers to my questions that night; no more closure for my gaping heart than I had had for the past two years.

Just as she had turned her back on me in our lives, she turned away from me that night. And I felt her no more, the ring on my finger nothing more than metal once again.

And I curled up under the blankets in my bed and wept.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a loose collection of scenes I wrote about my Aedan Cousland/Morrigan relationship. Not quite polished, but I thought I'd put up what I have.
> 
> Smut from chapter five onwards. So feel free to skip ahead if that's all you're here for, you dirty scoundrel ;)
> 
> This was my first time experimenting with a protagonist of dubious morality, so I welcome any feedback!


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